F65 
.K27 



•> 



A 









^O^^ 
^•^. 






"'^ ' 






o 



( 



V- >>• 17/ «' 








■ .>v^;, %/ ,^\ -^^^^* ;^., \^/ 































'^Ol 






UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 



SOME INFLUENCES OF ENVIRONMENT 
IN MASSACHUSETTS 



BY 

MALCOLM KEIR 



A THESIS 

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School in 

Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for 

the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 



PRESS OF 

THE NF.W Ef?A PRINTING COMPANY 

LAIICASTER, PA. 



I9I7 



UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 



SOME INFLUENCES OF ENVIRONMENT 
IN MASSACHUSETTS 



BY 

MALCOLM KEIR 



A THESIS 

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School in 

Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for 

THE Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 



PRESS OF 

THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY 

LANCASTER, PA. 



1917 



V'.v 



Gift 

nv?^ r raver a^tt 

" DEC \ tt» 



[Reprinted from The Bulletin of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia, 
Vol. XV, No. 3. July. 191 7-] 



SOME RESPONSES TO ENVIRONMENT IN 
MASSACHUSETTS. 

Malcolm Keir, 
Assistant Professor of Industry, University of Pennsylvania. 

The picture of Massachusetts to hold in mind is a rectangular 
state, mountainous in the west, hilly in the center and with lowlands 
in the east. Nestling between the western mountains — known as 
the Berkshires — lies the small narrow Berkshire valley, while 
shouldering aside the central hills is the broad valley of the Con- 
necticut River, separating the hill region into a western and an 
eastern highland. The latter gives place to the eastern plateau, and 
this in its turn grades into the coastal plain, a depressed section of 
which at the head of Massachusetts Bay is called the Boston Basin. 
The Berkshires may be identified by the city of Pittsfield ; the Con- 
necticut Valley by Springfield, which stands as its doorway ; the 
eastern highland by Worcester, the metropolis of all the central 
region ; and the Plain and Basin by Boston, the center for the activi- 
ties of all parts of the state adjacent to the sea. 

Standing out from this physical background are two factors — 
one the prevailing direction of the hills and valleys, the other the 
visitation of the glacier — that have been of importance in controlling 
the destinies of the commonwealth. Our attention will first be 
directed to the fact that the hills and valleys which are such char- 
acteristic features of Massachusetts topography are not an unordered 
jumble of chaotic land forms but upon close scrutiny reveal that the 
common trend is from the north toward the south. This character- 
istic is most pronounced in western Massachusetts and least dis- 
cernible in the east ; accordingly there is no hard and fast line that 
separates the region where the north-south tendency of the hills and 
valleys is well marked, from that in which it can hardly be traced. 
Nevertheless, a line drawn from the point where the Merrimac enters 
Massachusetts, to the point where the Blackstone leaves the state, 
would, with a fair degree of accuracy, divide the commonwealth into 

121 



2 Responses to Environment in Massachusetts. 

two parts, of which the western, comprising about two thirds the 
total land area, would be the portion that clearly portrays the pecu- 
liarity under discussion. 

The effect of the direction of the hills and valleys is to shut off 
the portion of the state west of the Merrimac-Blackstone line from 
free communication with the coast region. The Connecticut Valley 
is an exception for it may be reached easily from the coastal plain 
by means of the Connecticut River. The conformity to rule, dis- 
played by the topography and the consequent segregation of the 
eastern district is so easily stated and so readily recognizable that its 
significance may be overlooked and the consequences that arise from 
it either ignored or attributed to other causes ; nevertheless, the parts 
of the state earliest settled, the present distribution of population, 
the routes of roads, canals and railways all have been swayed by this 
feature of the environment. Furthermore, manufacturing and agri- 
culture have been moulded by the direction of their outlets, and even 
the variations in the type of summer visitors found in different parts 
of the state have been induced by the prevailing tendency for hills 
and valleys to cross the state from north to south. 

Having passed over the ocean, the Pilgrims and Puritans found 
themselves in that portion of Massachusetts which is most free from 
hills. The pioneers encountered no natural difficulties when they 
established communities north or south of Plymouth and Boston, 
for the land parallel to the coast, although by no means perfectly 
flat, interposed no great obstructions across the path of travel, but on 
the contrary, offered gentle rises and broad shallow valleys easy to 
overcome. Even toward the west the country was open and com- 
paratively level for a short distance, the present town of Framing- 
ham marking the edge of the favored district ; but beyond this point 
the higher portions of the plateau were encountered, hills became 
more numerous and harder to climb until insensibly the highland 
region was reached. Within the highlands few streams cut path- 
ways through the hill barriers and fewer valleys offered easy passage, 
therefore the " grain " of the country, so to speak, blocked travel 
toward the west, and held settlers on the coastal plain and lower 
plateau. As a consequence the early towns were strung along the 
shore or as far back from it as the coastal plain extended, but stopped 
short when the highlands were confronted. 

When the harmony of the first towns was disrupted by dissen- 

122 



Malcolm Keir. 3 

sions and the disgruntled or adventurous members of the Httle com- 
panies went forth to estabHsh new homes it was ease of travel along 
the coastal plain that led them southward to Providence (R. I.) and 




Fig. I. The Physical Divisions of Massachusetts. 



Saybrook (Conn.). The Connecticut River, whose mouth was at 
Saybrook, lured settlers from that tiny outpost onward to the upper 
river valley, because the waterway afforded so advantageous a means 
of transportation and was the only easy route by which the interior 
could be reached. In 1631 William Pynchon, hailing from Cam- 
bridge, founded Springfield, the first settlement in the portion of the 
Connecticut Valley that lies within Massachusetts. All the expanse 
of the eastern highland and plateau, a land of infinite hills, separated 
the new village from the towns along the Atlantic, with the result 
that for a hundred and fifty years after its foundation there was no 
overland connection between Springfield and eastern Massachusetts, 
and the little fortification constituted the remote western frontier, 
a refuge for pioneers fleeing from war-crazed Indians and itself the 

123 



4 Responses to Environment in Massachusetts. 

scene of redskin outrages. So little influence was exerted by the 
home government of Massachusetts at Boston over the distant 
colony, that the people sheltered by Pynchon's stockade affiliated 
themselves politically with Hooker's town of Hartford (Conn.) 
further down the Connecticut, and they very reluctantly withdrew 
this natural association to recognize the artificial political authority 
of the general court of Massachusetts, seated so far away at the 
head of Massachusetts Bay. 

If the physical conditions had permitted, it is entirely probable 
that the first colonists would have penetrated the interior of the state, 
and set up solitary detached homesteads just as immigrants did in 
later years when the western prairies were opened. If such had 
been the actual event then the town economy so closely connected 
with the name Puritan could not have developed as strongly, and the 
state and nation would have been the losers thereby; furthermore, 
agriculture would have replaced commerce as the leading industry, 
since it would have been the only one possible, and the whole course 
of American history would have been altered. As it was, the innate 
predilection of Puritans toward town government was given full 
encouragement by the natural environment and the gregarious in- 
stinct was not only not thwarted by nature but actually abetted, for 
the people were held close together either along the coast or in the 
Connecticut Valley whereas the rest of the state remained detached, 
isolated and unpeopled. 

Fear of the Indians might have brought about the same result 
when the colonies were first established, but this factor disappeared 
in a comparatively short time, so that a spreading out of popula- 
tion would have taken place if the natural checks had not kept it 
constrained. The power of the church in government matters also 
tended to create population centers, for a town could be incorporated 
as soon as a place of worship was built and a minister provided, and 
inasmuch as the compelling motive for emigration had been religion, 
the people desired churches as soon as their homes were erected. 
The church was such an important feature in a Puritan's life that it 
acted as a magnet in holding individuals within sound of the Sabbath 
bell. Notwithstanding this fact the church would have lost much 
of its power to bind men together if the topography had favored 
their drifting apart. The necessity for defense against a savage 
enemy, and the power of religion worked together with the influence 

124 



Malcolm Keir. 5 

of land forms to produce a dense population on the Massachusetts 
coast, yet if the steadfast force of hills and valleys had been taken 
away the tendency for settlers to lose themselves in the all surround- 
ing land could not have been prevented. Therefore we must at- 
tribute the early grouping of the population of Massachusetts to the 
rigors of the journey westward across the hills as contrasted with 
facility for movement in the littoral and river zones. 

The massing of the poulation in the lowland and valley had a 
direct bearing upon the industries conducted within the common- 
wealth for it did not take long for the people, especially those near 
the coast, to discover that greater wealth could be drawn from a 
generous ocean than from a niggardly land, and that the harvests 
which furnished the largest profits were not the yields of fields 
garnered into barns, but fish, sugar, and molasses gathered into ware- 
houses from the holds of sailing vessels. Commerce became the 
leading industry with fishing and shipbuilding as corollaries, a con- 
dition which was unchanged for two hundred years. Inasmuch as 
commerce is an urban business, the tendency away from rural life 
fostered by the topography was furthered by traffic, and coast towns 
increased in size. Hence the characteristic grouping of the popula- 
tion was maintained. 

During the first half century after 1800 political and economic 
changes made commerce unprofitable, but the condition of settlement 
stimulated by this industry was of great benefit to manufacturing, 
and aided it to take first place in the affairs of the state. For 
instance, the Portuguese population of New Bedford, attracted to 
the city by the trade of whaling, went to work in the cotton mills 
as operatives, when the factories were erected ; and the fishers' wives 
living in Marblehead and Salem, who had long bound shoes for 
Lynn " factors," followed the job into the shoe shops after machinery 
was adopted. In the Connecticut Valley when Springfield ceased 
being the point for the transshipment of water-borne cargoes, its 
strategic location made it a railroad center, so the people at the 
crossing point of the two principal travel routes — one north and 
south by the river, the other the land trail east and west — were 
not dispersed but augmented when locomotives replaced boats. 
The population assembled by the river and rail traffic proved an 
excellent nursery for the development of manufactures and made 
Springfield the home of factories of widely divergent types. 

125 



6 Responses to Environment in Massachusetts. 

The great impediment to progress in manufacturing in the early 
history of the United States was the dearth of labor, but in Massa- 
chusetts the natural environment had long pressed the people into 
narrow confines, so that when manufacturing was an infant industry 
it could draw upon the army of labor already mustered in a few 
camps. Most auspiciously the first industry, commerce, wherein this 
body of labor had been enrolled as an escape from the natural re- 
strictions of its environment, was on the decline just at the time 
when factory enterprisers were seeking employees. Hence the well- 
defined segregation of the inhabitants of Massachusetts has been 




Fig. 2. Distribution of Cities in Massachusetts. 



of immediate benefit to the two industries which have commanded 
the most attention in the state, and has been a potent though silent 
factor in bringing those industries into the foremost rank. The 
result is that the isolation of population in the east and along the 
Connecticut River first made necessary by topography has not only 
been preserved to our day, but actually made much more conspicu- 

126 



Malcolm Keir. 7 

ous, for the industries have emphasized a condition which they did 
not create. 

The present distribution of population follows closely the lines 
laid down by the original settlement, as may be shown by a study 
of the cities. The section of Massachusetts least under the influ- 
ence of hills is the Boston basin, whose boundaries may be roughly 
designated by a circle fifteen miles in radius and drawn about Boston 
as a center. Within this area, movement is almost unhampered, 
hence from the earliest times down to our day, people have swarmed 
across this plain. Fifteen out of the thirty-three cities of the state, 
housing thirty-eight per cent, of the total population, are located 
within the basin ; in other words, nearly two fifths of the men, 
women and children who live in Massachusetts are within sight of 
the gilded dome of the State House. As a result, Boston is the only 
one of the twenty-five largest places in the United States that has 
more people within ten miles of the city than within the metropolis 
itself. 

The communities which surround Boston are not suburbs in the 
sense of being merely overflow dormitories for men whose business 
is in the capital, — as is so frequently the case elsewhere, — ^but on the 
contrary, each town has a distinct individuality of its own and a 
lineage almost as ancient as Boston itself. For example, Cam- 
bridge, founded in 1631, has a population exceeding that of Albany, 
Des Moines or Spokane, and its university sheds luster on its great 
neighbor across the Charles River. Lynn, incorporated in 1629, is 
larger than Troy and is the greatest shoe city in the world. Somer- 
ville^ is greater than Savannah, Duluth, Norfolk, Utica or San 
Antonio. It is the abbatoir of Massachusetts, outranking all other 
places in the state in slaughtering and meat packing. Chelsea,- 
whose history dates from 1638, is prominent in the manufacture of 
rubber goods and shoes, while in Peabody, Salem (1629) and 
Woburn (1642) tanning and finishing leather predominate; so the 
list might be continued, each city distinguished in some one of the 
industries of the state and maintaining a high degree of personal dif- 
ference despite their close proximity to each other and to Boston. 

1 Incorporated in 1842, therefore an exception so far as lineage is con- 
cerned. 

2 Population exceeds that of Jacksonville, Wichita, Galveston, Kalamazoo 
or Racine. 

127 



8 Responses to Environment in Massachusetts. 

Next to Boston basin, the portion of Massachusetts that is least 
divided into narrow strips by hills is the lowland that parallels the 
ocean and extends back from it for about twenty miles. Outside of 
the basin, which of course is part of the lowland, there are nine 
cities in the coastal zone and into these places sixteen per cent, of the 
population is crowded. The physical features which kept Puritans 
near the shore are still operating to hold the people in check, for 
upon the lowland one may find more than half (54 per cent.) of all 
the persons who dwell in the state. 

In all of highland Massachusetts there are but eight cities, not- 
withstanding that in territory this section comprises two thirds of 
the area of the state. The location of these communities points to 
the influence of the trend of the land, for seven^ are either at the 
heads of valleys and therefore the extreme limit for ingress to the 
interior from the south or at strategic situations where the few east- 
west valleys cross the north-south ones. In general the highland 
cities (containing 12 per cent, entire population) are smaller than 
those in the lowland, because they are more difficult of access. If 
the percentages of population represented by the thirty-three cities 
are totaled one comes upon the astonishing fact that two thirds of 
the human beings in Massachusetts live in an environment of paved 
streets and policemen. Since most of the inhabitants of the state 
nestle under the shadow of Boston and the remainder in cities widely 
separated from each other, it follows that much of Massachusetts 
is curiously empty, despite the fact that next to Rhode Island, 
Massachusetts has more people per square mile than any other state 
in the union. This anomalous condition has been brought about 
by the arrangement of the hills and valleys, for it first segregates 
the coastal district from the interior and then separates each group 
of inland cities from the others, exerting a quiet, powerful influence 
in determining which parts of the state shall be filled with people 
and what parts almost deserted. 

What has been said in regard to the control topography has ex- 
ercised over settlement from the time of landing of the Pilgrims 
down to our own day, may have foreshadowed what we have to tell 
concerning transportation ; for both the distribution of the popula- 
tion and the routes of traffic have been under the same dominance. 
3 The exception is Holyoke, created by water power. 

128 




-.«--:=3%,«.^»i 



Plate III. Catamount Mountain and Deerfield River. Shelburne Falls, 
Mass. A typical scene in western Massachusetts that shows why roads follow river 
valleys. 




Plate IV. East Portal Hoosac Tunnel, Boston & Maine Railroad. 



Malcolm Keir. 



9 



The unequal apportionment of the low and high land in Massa- 
chusetts has given rise to two distinct types of transportation routes, 
the one associated with the maritime province, the other connected 
with the western hills, valleys and mountains. The Merrimac- 
Blackstone line which we have already defined marks a zone that is 
the division area between the lowland type of route and the high- 
land. 

Since the ease of travel upon the lowland produced a dense 
settlement within this restricted domain we would expect the earliest 




Fig. 3. The Railways of Massachusetts. 



and most complete development of all forms of transportation to 
take place there. At a time when most communication between 
colonies was by means of boats and within nine years (1639) after 
its own foundation (1630) Boston was connected with Plymouth by 
a road overland. Weymouth, Concord, Salem, and Lynn were not 
slow to follow in the opening of roads, so that soon Boston became 
the center from which many routes radiated, and with succeeding 

129 



10 Responses to Environment in Massachusetts. 

years the multiplication of villages, towns and cities but heightened 
the characteristic. Boston was selected by nature for this role be- 
cause it is both at the middle of the lowland's sea border and at the 
head of Massachusetts Bay, while Salem, its early rival, is on the 
outer rim of each and Plymouth is entirely outside ; the latter place 
suffered too in prestige because the soil back of its confines was too 
poor to be conducive to settlements. All roads, therefore, led to 
Boston and made it the metropolis for the entire coast district. 

The northern position of Boston in respect to the other settle- 
ments along the Atlantic would naturally turn the main stream of 
outward travel in a southern direction, therefore it was but logical 
for the first stage coach line (1767) in Massachusetts to run between 
Boston and Providence. The usual method of incoming travellers 
was to proceed from southern points to Providence by boat and then 
continue their journey by land, using the stages that ran between 
the two northern cities, so as to avoid the tiresome and often dan- 
gerous voyage around Cape Cod. Gradually the stage routes were 
extended southward along the coast touching New Haven, New 
York and Philadelphia, so that eventually salt water travel could be 
avoided entirely if one so desired. It was almost twenty years after 
the first line along the coast was established that coaches overcame 
the trials of westward journeys from Boston toward the Connecticut 
River and thence southward, although this route later became famous 
on account of its shortness. 

Roads and stage line appeared in the towns of the Massachusetts 
shore zone as early as any places in America, and likewise, about the 
beginning of the nineteenth century, when the canal fever burned 
so hotly in the United States, Massachusetts was one of the first 
states to charter this form of a waterway. Boston was joined to 
Lowell by the Middlesex Canal in 1808, in order to give an outlet 
for Lowell's rapidly growing cotton factories through the port of 
Boston. Compared with the Pennsylvania and Maryland canals the 
Middlesex was constructed with the greatest ease because the low 
plateau through which it was cut raised so few engineering prob- 
lems, and also for the reason that the total length was twenty-seven 
miles, such a short distance between termini being a characteristic 
of routes confined to the Massachusetts coast area, since no two 
cities could be very far apart. 

130 



Malcolm Keir. ii 

The Middlesex Canal, like most of the others built in the first 
flush of the craze for internal improvements, lost its prestige when 
a railroad paralleled its course (in 1835). The Boston and Lowell 
Railroad was one of three chartered and completed at about the 
same time, the Boston and Providence, and Boston and Worcester 
being the other two. Inasmuch as these roads ran north, west and 
south it is apparent that the tendency for all routes to radiate from 
Boston was not broken. The towns along the north shore were 
united to the metropolis by the Eastern Railroad laid down in 1838, 
thus adding one more spoke to the wheel that turns around Boston. 
Branch lines from these four principal outgoing routes reach every 
community in the coastal plain or plateau, and with the junctions 
formed between the main roads form a complex web of steel that 
binds all of the coast region to the capital city. 

The work begun by steam railroads has been continued by street 
railways, starting in Boston in 1856. Horse car lines running from 
Boston to Charlestown, South Boston and Lynn began a process of 
consolidation which electric cars have completed, for all of the 
fifteen-mile circle of communities in the Boston basin are to all in- 
tents and purposes one single metropolitan area. Not only the towns 
and cities immediately adjacent to Boston are corded with electric 
transportation but even places so distant as Gloucester, Providence 
and Worcester. 

The automobile truck is the latest conveyance transferring both 
passengers and goods from town to town ; the service inaugurated 
by the railroads and extended by the electric lines is made intimate 
and complete by the trucks. The railroads touched one part of a 
town, trolleys came into the main streets, but trucks may go from 
house to house. Trucks are the latest most personal transportation 
factor in Massachusetts. With these three, locomotive, electric car 
and truck, no place in eastern -Massachusetts can remain remote or 
isolated, whereas before their coming even Cambridge was a great 
distance from Boston. 

Nowhere else in Massachusetts or in all New England can there 
be found a condition that duplicates the picture we have just 
sketched, because in no other portion of the state or in the group of 
states to which this one belongs is there such a lack of hills, moun- 
tains and valleys that men may build roads, canals and railways 

131 



12 



Responses to Environment in Massachusetts. 



where they will. The presence of hills to the west made people con- 
tent to stay on the easily traversed strip of land near the Atlantic 
and gave rise to such a density of population that every mode of 
transportation was seized upon and speedily developed. The pecul- 
iarly favorable position of Boston, combining the advantage of a 
site most admirably adapted to communication by water, and a 




tcB fT fe Hrio ff j» w tc as 30 fr ^t iJ » u- >• 'S /o s- /m fr to »r fio it ic i,s 40 jx «> fj- 40 jx jo jj- je is /o f ^ 
f^lLCS WfsT From Boston 



; 7 
< h 



Fig. 4. Profiles of the B. & A. and B. & M. Railroads. 



situation that gave it command over all land trails, forced it to be- 
come the focal point for all roads and conveyances. 

If one crosses the line drawn between the Merrimac, at the 
northern boundary of the state, and the Blackstone on the southern, 
one is soon aware that transportation in the western section bears no 
resemblance to that across the line in the east, for there is no center 
toward which all roads run, but there are as many highway systems 
as there are valleys. The further west one goes the more inde- 
pendent and less related each valley system becomes, for the inter- 
vening hills are converted into barriers more and more difficult to 
cross, so that the usual routes of travel, instead of converging upon 
a particular point, run parallel to each other. In order to under- 

132 



Malcolm Keir. 13 

stand the transportation of interior Massachusetts, therefore, one 
must know the disposition of the valleys. 

The distribution of valleys in central Massachusetts gives rise 
to a picture which resembles a gigantic bug, of which the Connecticut 
forms the body, while the Deerfield and Millers River valleys con- 
stitute the forelegs and the Westfield and Chicopee valleys the hind- 
legs. The articulation of the right and left " limbs " is so sym- 
metrical that these are of the greatest consequence in all transporta- 
tion across the state, for roads like veins run along the " legs " and 
down both sides of the " body." These four east-west valleys are 
the only ones available for overland traffic, yet even these were 
neglected for a century and a half after settlements were made in 
the central and western parts of the state, because most of the 
pioneers who took up land came by way of the numerous valleys 
that opened from the south, the chief highway of course being the 
Connecticut River. 

The first stage line to connect the east coast with the Connecticut 
Valley ran between Boston and Springfield and made use of the 
Chicopee route for the reason that, in all the welter of high land and 
low, this was the one course reasonably free from obstruction. 
Along this so-called " Boston Post Road " one traveled comfortably 
across the Boston basin to its edge at Framingham where one com- 
menced the wearying journey up hill and down dale until the tiny 
valley gouged from the hills by the Seven Mile River permitted the 
coach to follow the trough instead of struggling over the crests. 
The Seven Mile runs into the Chicopee and the latter joins the Con- 
necticut, but despite the fact that the valleys offered smoother going 
than the previous road across the ridges they were little better than 
gorges, so it was not until the Connecticut was reached that a jolt- 
ing, rocking, bumping coach could settle into an even glide. Where 
there is little choice one must take what one can get, so these narrow, 
rough valleys had a high value, because there was no better route 
that wayfarers might select. 

The Connecticut River and the Chicopee trail were the only val- 
uable inland routes* in Massachusetts until the state began canal con- 

* The value of the river as a highway is clearly proven by the repetition 
of names of towns. Thus Hanover, N. H., commemorates Hanover, Conn. 
Haverhill and Newbury, Vermont, are direct descendants of Massachusetts 



14 Responses to Environment in Massachusetts. 

struction. The places where canals were built and the effect they 
had upon the industrial life of Massachusetts clearly point to the in- 
fluence of the trend of hills and valleys. The first attempts at canal 
operations were at falls in the Connecticut River, beginning in 1795 
at what is now Holyoke and continuing until 1892, when the last 
rapids were looped by water detours. These canals gave the valley 
towns uninterrupted boat traffic to Long Island Sound and strength- 
ened the bonds of trade between the valley and New York. A canal 
following the valley of the Farmington River was opened from 
Northampton above Springfield to New Haven (Connecticut), in 
order to give the Connecticut city a share in the valley trade. Wor- 
cester dug itself out of the enfolding hills by canalizing the Black- 
stone River so that her products could be shipped by barge through 
the port of Providence. This event marks the beginning of the rise 
of Worcester, for until that time (1828) it had been a struggling 
village of three thousand people isolated by its interior location. 
Given an outlet for the first time by the canals, which was enhanced 
later by railroad communication, it has grown to be the second 
largest city in the state. It is noticeable that none of these canals 
ran east and west, but all followed the general trend of the valleys 
in the other direction, and it is from this fact that the canals gained 
their greatest importance, for they were the direct cause for the in- 
troduction of railroads. 

With the towns in the Connecticut Valley pouring their products 
into New Haven and New York, and with Worcester adding to the 
prestige of Providence, Boson felt that she was losing her title to 
supremacy and sought a remedy whereby she might be the gateway 
for the entire state. She first proposed to connect the Merrimac 
with the Connecticut and then cross the Berkshire Hills to the Hud- 
son River, but this waterway, gigantic for its time, never got beyond 
mere talk, since canals were discarded in favor of railways. Boston 
turned attention to them as a salvation, for she hoped to divert the 
traffic of the Connecticut River towns and of Worcester to herself 
by a railroad across the state. 

The Boston and Worcester Railroad, chartered in 183 1 and 

towns of the same names. Other examples: In New Hampshire, Charles- 
town, Springfield and Concord. In Vermont, Springfield, Windsor and New- 
port. 



Malcolm Keir. 15 

opened four years later, was the product of Boston's scheme to over- 
turn nature by artificial means. To make the whole width of the 
state contribute to Boston, the Western Railroad in 1839 continued 
the B. & W. to Springfield^ and then within two years more tapped 
the Hudson at Albany. Notwithstanding the fact that these rail- 
roads faced westward, contrary to the rule that trafitic moves north 
and south in highland Massachusetts, nevertheless the engineers who 
surveyed the right of way could find no better path across the state 
than the rough one via the Chicopee, first utilized by stage coaches. 
Beyond Springfield the Westfield River gorge was the only prac- 
ticable path, therefore the scarcity of east-west valleys has forced 
all traffic to flow through the few that do exist. 

Not satisfied with one line that crosses only the southern part of 
the state, a second road, the Boston and Maine (1836), was pushed 
across northern Massachusetts, and the difficulties it met well illus- 
trate the influence of land forms on travel. 

This railroad ran out of Boston by a circuitous route to Fitch- 
burg ; beyond that city it was forced to travel around a long loop in 
order to climb to the top of the eastern highland which it crossed to 
Gardner. From Gardner it searched out the narrow valley of Mil- 
lers River and followed it to the Connecticut Valley. At that point 
the westward reaching valley of Deerfield invited further travel, but 
at the headwaters of the Deerfield there towered the ridges of the 
Hoosac Mountain Range. Across the mountains at North Adams, 
there was a river valley (the Hoosic) pointing in the right direction 
for the railroad but the range was in between. For twenty years 
the railroad was halted while a tunnel was being pushed through the 
five miles of mountain mass, and to open the passage cost sixteen 
million dollars. From Fitchburg (Mass.) to Troy (N. Y.), the 
Boston & Maine has been under the heavy handicap of overcoming 
natural obstacles, because it runs contrary to the lines laid down by 
topography. 

Long before this second east-west line was established, junctions 
v/ere made by the towns upon the Boston & Albany with the rail- 
roads that crossed Connecticut and Rhode Island. Thus Spring- 
field was connected with Hartford in 1844 and later to New Haven 
and New York, the road eventually becoming part of the New Haven 

5 The roads were later consolidated under the name Boston & Albany. 



1 6 Responses to Environment in Massachusetts. 

Railroad system. As an outlet for Springfield it followed the natural 
line of the river valley, the route to which the city had long been 
accustomed, so it has proved of greater importance to the valley 
metropolis than the connection eastward to Boston. The accom- 
panying list of river valleys and railroads proves that the tendency 
to use the natural travel routes was not confined to one valley and 
one railroad but was general. 

Railroads. 
River Valleys. Northern Terminus. Southern Terminus. 

Farmington and Quinipiac. Northampton (Mass.). New Haven (Conn.). 

Willimantic and Shetucket. New London (Conn.). 

Quinnebaug Southbridge (Mass.). Norwich (Conn.). 

Blackstone Worcester (Mass.). Providence (R. I.). 

Housatonic Pittsfield (Mass.). Norwalk (Conn.). 

Everyone of these railroads extended in the general north-south 
direction and coincided with the long used systems of highways that 
bound central and western Massachusetts to the states on the south 
rather than to Lowland Massachusetts to the east. 

Since 1850 the state has been covered with the lines shown on 
the map, so that no part is far removed from a railroad, yet a close 
inspection will reveal that the apparent confusion of routes actually 
clings to the rules laid down by the first roads, for even today there 
are but two trunk lines westward, and all the branches from them 
run north or south. It is only around Boston in the comparatively 
low lying and almost level land that the word " web " applies, while 
to the rest of the state " stripes " would be a more fitting term, the 
" stripes " being vertical between two horizontal bands. 

A study of the electric roads would disclose a case closely anal- 
ogous to that of the steam lines, for the initial roads ran along the 
valleys, and are making east-west connection only now. The few 
that do cross the state east and west parallel the railroads and follow 
the well-worn paths in the Westfield and Chicopee River valleys. 

The automobile routes, furthermore, that are listed in the Blue 
Books and outlined on the maps show forth the oft-repeated char- 
acteristics. We may make the generaHzation, therefore, that all 
travel in highland Massachusetts tends to run north and south by 
parallel lines following the trend of the hills and valleys, in direct 

136 



"»# 




> 



Malcolm Keir. ly 

contradiction to the system in the coast area, where travel all con- 
verges upon one point because there physical conditions not only 
permit but also encourage it. 

The situation for the Highlands, that we have outlined, has a 
profound influence on the business relations of the commonwealth, 
for the commercial ties that are strongest connect western and cen- 
tral Massachusetts with New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island, 
rather than with Boston. 

The direction of the Connecticut Valley which, as we have said 
before, formed the natural outlet for Springfield was southward; 
therefore, Hartford, New Haven and New York were more closely 
bound to Springfield by tradition, transportation and trade than 
that city's own eastern sister towns. The Berkshire Valley, reached 
from the south by the Housatonic River, whose mouth is on Long 
Island Sound near Bridgeport, Conn., has had a history similar to 
the Connecticut Valley and even a large part of its land is owned 
by citizens of New York City. The result is that western Massa- 
chusetts today feels independent of its eastern capital because its 
business relations, its summer visitors, and its main arteries of travel 
are all from the south, following the trend of the land. Boston is 
the hub of the coastal region of all New England but its outer rim 
falls far short of reaching its own western co-cities. 

Furthermore a similar story could be told of most towns between 
Springfield and Worcester. There is nothing to hinder the spread- 
ing of the influence of Boston throughout the coastal plain and the 
eastern plateau, but the highlands to the west offer a bar in that 
direction, so it may be said that business relations with Boston and 
the attitude of regarding that city as a Mecca ceases at Worcester 
(the corresponding point in Connecticut is Stonington), beyond 
which point the Boston influence is highly diluted. Boston feared 
that canals would lessen her importance so she endorsed all railroad 
promotions for the purpose of strengthening her dominance; that 
her hopes have been most largely realized in the coastal region is 
due to no fault of hers, but to the trend of the high land across the 
pathways that lead to Boston. We are accustomed to hear Boston 
spoken of as the " Hub of New England " but as a matter of fact 
that is not strictly true, for she is the hub of the coastal area, only. 
Inland towns of Vermont and New Hampshire, just as the interior 

137 



1 8 Some Responses to Environment in Massachusetts. 

section of Massachusetts, turn toward the south for commercial 
affihations, because southern cities are more easily reached than Bos- 
ton on the east. If one realizes that two thirds of Massachusetts lies 
in the highland and mountain sections one can conceive how signifi- 
cant it is that these areas are shut off from eastern Massachusetts. 
Not only have transportation routes and the distribution of 
population been vitally affected by the characteristic direction of the 
land forms but the industries of the state also have felt the moulding 
influence of their surroundings ; particularly is this true in respect to 
manufactures, agriculture and the " summer vacation business." 



[Reprinted from The Bulletin of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia, 
Vol. XV, No. 4, October, 191 7.] 



SOME RESPONSES TO ENVIRONMENT IN 
MASSACHUSETTS. 

Malcolm Keir, 
Assistant Professor of Industry, University of Pennsylvania. 

(Continued from the July Bulletin.) 

The most marked attribute of Massachusetts' chief industry — 
manufacturing — is the degree to which various types are segregated 
or " localized " — to use the economic term. The textile industry, 
which is the greatest one in the state and in whose parts Massa- 
chusetts leads the nation, shows a marked tendency to cling to a few 
places. The cotton mills are for the most part in four localities, 
namely : on the southeast bays, the Merrimac and Connecticut rivers 
and the Blackstone; the wool mills are gathered together on the 
small streams of the eastern highland ; the shoe factories cling to 
the Boston lowland and eastern plateau ; and the writing paper plants 
are concentrated in the Connecticut Valley. A similar confinement 
to a narrow region is true of the jewelry, whip, horn-goods, chair, 
tanning and optical industries. We can not attribute this high degree 
of localization to physical causes entirely, for that is by no means 
true, yet the isolation caused by the trend of the valleys has been a 
very large factor contributing to the result. Most industries spread 
from one center by imitation, so it is quite natural that the com- 
munities within easy reach from the originating town should be the 
ones most likely to copy a successful enterprise, for the towns in the 
next valley, though near at hand geographically, are far away 
socially and industrially because the lines of communication are 
opposed to free interchange. We find, therefore, that the same in- 
dustry is repeated in nearly every town in the same valley, even 
when that valley crosses two states, whereas the next valley, to the 
east or west, will be occupied by a different set of factories. As 
examples, the Quinnebaug and Thames Valley are full of woolen 
mills from Southbridge, Mass., to Norwich, Conn., but, on the other 
hand, the next large valley to the west, the Connecticut, is just as 
characteristically a paper center. To clinch the matter yet closer, we 

167 



8 Some Responses to Environment in Massachusetts. 

have but to point to the fact that the capitahsts who founded Lowell 
created Lawrence also, both towns in the same Merrimac River 
Valley, but it was Hartford money that built Holyoke,*' although 
Lawrence and Holyoke were started about the same time and for 
the same manufacturing industry, namely cotton. As a consequence, 
the localization of industry is more characteristic of Massachusetts 
than any other state, a condition which is not due to economic causes 
entirely, but is partly based on the separation of each little section of 
Massachusetts from all the other parts of the state. 

Agriculture too, as well as manufacturing, shows the segregating 
effect exerted by the topography, for the type of farming conducted 
in any one particular place is largely determined by the market and 
this in turn is influenced by routes of travel. The best market in 
Massachusetts is fovmd in the Boston basin with its teeming cities 
crowded close together, but this Mecca for food producers is shut 
off from most of Massachusetts so that even where soil and distance 
would permit the growth of truck crops they are not the rule, 
because it is too difficult to haul them to the point of consumption. 
It is only upon the Boston lowland, coastal plain and lower portion 
of the eastern plateau, all within the region devoid of great hills, that 
truck crops predominate. The Connecticut Valley is an exception to 
this rule, for gardens fill all the space not taken up by manufacturing 
cities and towns. Of course, all truck gardening must be conducted 
within a reasonable diistance of its market, but the area for Boston in 
hill-bound Massachusetts is about half that for Philadelphia from 
across level New Jersey. 

The greatest agricultural activity in Massachusetts is dairying 
and it is remarkably distributed over the whole state, yet — the crown- 
ing point of all in reference to the influence of the trend of the 
valleys and hills upon agriculture — despite the overwhelming pre- 
dominance of dairying among the farming activities of the state, 
the cities surrounding Boston have found it advantageous to draw 
milk from the Rhode Island and Connecticut farms to the south, 
and from Maine and even Canada to the north rather than from the 
highland sections within their own domains to the west; although 
these places outside the state have no special natural superiority. 
Knowledge of this condition makes Massachusetts dairymen very 

6 Both Hartford, Conn., and Holyoke, Mass., are in the Connecticut River 
Valley. 

i68 



Malcolm Keir. 9 

angry and they attribute it entirely to unfair railway rates, but they 
will have to remove the hills before the situation can be completely 
cured. 




Fig. 5. Principal Towns Incorporated by 1650. 



Similar to the segregating of manufactures and crops there is a 
differentiation in the type of summer visitors found in the various 
sections of Massachusetts. We are not accustomed to think of 
vacationers as forming an " industry," yet to all of New England 
the entertainment of people upon a holiday is of no mean importance, 
for it is estimated that fifteen to twenty million dollars is the annual 
" harvest " to these states from this occupation. In the Berkshires, 
in the central highlands and in the numerous shore resorts, Massa- 
chusetts takes a goodly toll from those who come to enjoy her natural 
advantages. The curious aspect of this summer traffic is that in no 
two parts of the state does one meet people from the same home 
cities, but each section has its own individual cHentele. The well- 
to-do east-coast people spend the summer along the North Shore 

169 



lo Some Responses to Environment in Massachusetts. 

or go still further north into Maine and Canada, while the less 
wealthy people seek the beaches along the South Shore. Very few 
either of the rich or the poor travel westward in their own state. 
On the farms of the highlands the visitors come from the towns to 
the south in Connecticut, while the city people of the Connecticut 
Valley flock southward to the shore resorts along the border of the 
Long Island Sound. The Berkshire hills and valley are the seat of 
estates belonging to wealthy people from New York and a few from 
Connecticut. The double-track express train service to the Berk- 
shires runs northward from New York and not westward from 
Boston.'^ In almost every case the summer population travels north 
or south. You may choose your social environment for the summer 
by a nice selection of physical environment, for the valley you elect 
will determine the people you meet. 

By a little reflection over what has been stated, it is easy to per- 
ceive that the topography of Massachusetts greatly alters the cur- 
rents of life within the state, although there are few insurmountable 
barriers. It has affected the earliest settlements and the present 
distribution of population, and furthermore caused a segregation in 
manufacturing projects, in agricultural activities and even in the 
persons attracted to the state upon pleasure bent. This feature of 
the physical environment therefore is worthy of attention. 

A no less important phase of the natural surroundings in Massa- 
chusetts is the effect produced upon the lives and occupations of 
the people by the one-time visitation of the glacier, the most im- 
portant and far-reaching event in the geological history of the state. 
By forming numerous water-power sites, made excellent by reservoir 
lakes, the glacier was directly responsible for the later growth of 
manufacturing in Massachusetts ; by distorting the soil, the ice 
sheet set in motion those forces which have made agriculture in the 
state of so little importance; and by removing the overburden of 
rock the passage of the northern invader brought to light the under- 
lying stores of granite, the chief rock resource of the present com- 
monwealth ; therefore, manufacturing, agriculture and quarrying, 
the three great industries of the present, have^ grown out of condi- 
tions produced in this one geological era of the past. 

^ North Adams on the Boston and Maine and Pittsfield on the Boston and 
Albany are the only towns having direct connection with Boston, while every 
town in the Berkshire Valley is on the direct line to New York City. 

170 



Malcolm Keir. 



II 



Wherever the ancient rivers were obstructed by glacial material, 
they were forced to find new paths around the blocked passageway 
and in making the detour often flowed over uncut ledges ; the power 
at falls thus created has been a source of wealth that is difficult to 
estimate because the hundreds of small places made available for 
manufacturing proved a boon to the earliest experimenters in factory 
enterprises and helped to establish manufacturing as the foremost 




Fig. 6. Principal Towns Incorporated by 1800 and 1850. 



industry of Massachusetts. All of the brooks and small streams of 
the state are full of falls and reach the large rivers through narrow 
canyons, both of which conditions favored their early development, 
for the reason that small streams were easier to control than large 
rivers and the canyons readily accommodated themselves to dams 
and reservoirs. 

Waterfalls are useless for power purposes unless the stream flow 
is maintained with a high degree of uniformity throughout the year 
and here again the glacier aided the future commonwealth, for not 

171 



Some Responses to Environment in Massachusetts. 



only did the ice sheet produce falls but also made natural reservoirs 
wherein flood waters were stored and streams regulated during the 
dry season. After the main body of ice left the land, there remained 
in hollows and deep valleys blocks of ice which, slowly rotting, left, 
depressions that formed lakes. In the course of time some of these 
lakes have been partially filled by vegetation and are now swamps. 



Va.lu.e o^ A\a.nu.^aci:u.reJ.TToclucts rir Ca.[)Lta. 
DcUara 




ffl 



A^eir 



Fig. 7. Value of Manufactured Products Per Capita. 

Both the lakes and swamps perform the same function of accom- 
modating floods and holding back the water so as to bring about a 
more uniform flow in the stream. It is the combination of falls, 
'and regularity in the volume of water, that makes a site valuable for 
power, and since the glacier endowed Massachusetts with both of 
these advantages, it enabled her to lead the way in the development 
of manufactures. 

Naturally the most falls were in the highlands and mountains 
of Massachusetts and when about 1750 water power commenced to 
be utilized for small mills, a deflection of population from the coastal 
plain and plateau took place, so that almost all of the present towns 
of importance in the inland territory began their history between 
1750 and 1825. For the first time the domain remote from salt 

172 



Malcolm Keir. 13 

water assumed an importance in the eyes of the progressive young 
men in Massachusetts ; a new resource was spread before their gaze. 
Mill after mill was set up, and towns consequently appeared where 
previously lonely farmers had led sequestered lives. The " Father 
of the Cotton Industry," Samuel Slater, whose first factory was at 
Pawtucket, R. I. (1790), followed the Blackstone River back into 
Massachusetts and established a new project in that part of Oxford 
that is now Webster. The whole Blackstone Valley from Worcester 
to Providence became virtually one continuous mill village, and 
similarly the Quinnebaug River from its diminutive sources above 
Southbridge southward to Norwich, Connecticut, clattered with the 
activity of wool mills. The Chicopee, the Westfield, and especially 
the small branches of all the streams named, took on an importance 
that hitherto had been utterly foreign to them. In this manner and 
for the purpose of developing the water resources, inland Massa- 
chusetts was settled and transformed to a region of potential con- 
sequence. To the citizen of 1812 who saw commerce paralyzed, and 
the promise of a rapid rise in the importance of manufacturing, it 
must have seemed that the long neglected interior of the state would 
soon threaten the sovereignty of the shore zone, for the man of that 
time could not have foretold the limitations that progress in ma- 
chines would place upon the water power of the state ; he could not 
have predicted that looms and spinning frames would grow so large 
and heavy that the power of many of the small streams would be 
inadequate. The era of water power helped to distribute the popula- 
tion over a wider area and bring into usefulness a great proportion 
of the territory of the state, and in its heyday the textile industry 
became largely fixed as an inland business. If the invention of 
textile machinery had come after the successful application of steam 
engines to factory needs instead of before it, central Massachusetts 
would never have been much more than a summer resort. How true 
this statement is may be gauged by the shoe industry in which the 
industrial revolution did not take place until after 1850, with the 
result that it has always hugged the shore. If this business had 
been put upon a machine basis at the time when cotton was wrgsted 
from hand labor, it inevitably would have been moved inland^ -fipon 

8 There is a tendency on foot at present for shoe factories to move inland 
to textile centers, but this is due to the exactions of labor upon the coast and 
the effort of manufacturers to escape to a town where their shops will be 



14 Some Responses to Environment in Massachusetts. 

power sites, and the momentum of an early start would have kept 
it there. Fall River and New Bedford, located upon the coast and 
using coal for power, illustrate what would have happened to the 
majority of cotton mills if they had succeeded rather than preceded 
the steam engine. We must attribute the expansion of inland 
Massachusetts to its resource of glacially derived water power and 
consider it fortunate that its factories became firmly rooted before 
coal was used for power purposes. 

The earliest attempts at manufacturing were upon an exceedingly 
simple scale, hence unbelievably tiny streams could be utilized for 
power. For example, the story is told that at Southbridge upon a 
branch of the Quinnebaug River, the manufacturer whose little shop 
has grown into the great American Optical Company was accustomed 
to employ a horse to furnish power when the brook ran dry in 
summer ; and at one time a lusty negro was hired at ten cents an hour 
to turn the wheels. Power requirements so small as this did not 
necessitate large streams ; therefore, wherever a brook flowed there a 
shop might be found, and the glacier had left the state a legacy of 
innumerable such waterways. Fire, flood and failure wiped out 
many of the experiments in manufacturing and only a gaunt, naked 
water wheel on a broken raceway marks the scene of former activity ; 
but not all the early attempts came to an end so evil, for many of 
the first little shops have grown into great plants, such as the Amer- 
ican Optical Company just mentioned. The chief importance of the 
numerous little falls is that they encouraged so many men to try their 
fortunes in factory enterprises out of which the fittest have survived 
and placed Massachusetts at the head of American manufacturing 
states. 

The age of small-scale operation did not last long, especially in 
Massachusetts' greatest industry, cotton cloth production, because 
improvements in machinery were made so rapidly and spinning 
frames and looms became so much larger and heavier that the small 
water powers were utterly inadequate to drive the belts and turn 
the shafts ; hence cotton manufacturing concentrated upon the large 
rive^ffe. A case in point is furnished by the Boston Manufacturing 
Company, whose first mill at Waltham, built in 1813, was the earliest 

the most prized work places because their wages are higher than in a cotton 
or woolen mill. 




Plate VII. Miller's River at Royalston, Mass. One of the many 
small power sites in Central Massachusetts. Courtesy of Boston and Maine 
Railroad. 




Plate VIII. The "Million IJoi.lar Oam" at Holyoke, on the Connecti- 
cut River. Courtesy Holyoke Water Power Co. 



Malcolm Keir. 15 

complete cotton factory in America, but which by 1825 was in- 
capable of expanding to fit the enlarged requirements of the busi- 
ness because the stream was too small. The company bought a site 
on the Merrimac, at a point where it drops thirty-two feet, and 
brings to the use of man 30,000 horsepower, so that next to Holyoke 
it is the most valuable power in New England; there (in 1826) out 
of the woods the town of Lowell was brought to life. By 1850 
Lowell had a population of 33,000 and was exceeded in size only by 
Boston.** Along the banks of its power canals there were thirty- 
three mills, but since there seemed to be no possibility of additional 
expansion, the group of men in control went further down the 
Merrimac and selected the location^** for a new village where Law- 
rence now stands. That city at present contains the largest woolen 
mills in the world. 

At about the same time as the inception of Lawrence, plans were 
matured to erect on .the Connecticut River within the confines of 
present-day Holyoke, a city which would be a second Lowell. In 
furtherance of this object a dam was built across the state's greatest 
river and when completed the Lyman Mills were established on the 
power site thus brought into use. Therefore, as the cotton in- 
dustry grew, the wealth of small power sites was neglected and the 
few of the first magnitude developed, but large as well as small 
powers were a heritage of the glacier. 

A similar advance from small streams to a great river is shown 
by the paper industry of the state. In the Berkshire Valley, where 
some of the first attempts to manufacture paper had been made, 
mills became a most familiar sight, for between 1800 and 1850 
twenty-seven paper-producing plants were built there. The town 
of Lee seemed in a fair way toward becoming a paper center of great 
importance, for there were no less than eighteen mills within its 
boundaries. However a change in paper manufacture took place 
which robbed Lee of most of its glory. The mills of which those at 
Lee were a type used but small amounts of power to reduce rags to 
a pulp. Frequently the Lee papermakers formed the sheets by 
hand, for even the small crude, easily operated machines often were 

9 To-day Worcester is the second largest city of the state. 

10 Develops 11,900 horsepower at 26-foot fall. 

US 



1 6 Some Responses to Environment in Massachusetts. 

not installed for this second division^^ of papermaking. A revolu- 
tion was started when Foudrinier (1803) invented a machine that 
turned out a large amount of paper continuously, for this machine 
necessitated a great deal of power to keep it running. The machine 
alone took up as much room as a whole mill did previous to its in- 
vention. Furthermore, the machine called for a much enhanced 
amount of pulp, so that the pulp grinders were necessarily increased 
in capacity and consequently demanded more power to operate. The 
Foudrinier machine therefore paved the way for large-scale produc- 
tion, and made cheap power a crucial factor. The greatest water 
power in the state was established when the Holyoke dam was con- 
structed, so the largest paper mills were built along the canals that 
cross the city, and it became the greatest writing-paper center in the 
country. There are a few famous mills in the Berkshire Valley — , 
for example, the Z. and W. M. Crane, Old Berkshire Mills, the 
Pioneer Mills and the Government Mills, in which latter our paper 
for money is produced — , but despite these noted exceptions the 
supremacy in high-grade papermaking rests with Holyoke and is 
founded on cheap power. Glacial action turned the Connecticut 
River from its true course at that point and in endeavoring to get 
back to its former path the river has cut across intervening ledges 
and falls seventy feet in two miles. The volume of the river is so 
great that this fall created 40,000 horsepower, a figure unsurpassed 
in New England. The influence of abundant cheap power changed 
the headship of the paper industry from ancient Lee to upstart 
Holyoke. 

The paper industry, as well as the cotton, shows that first the 
small then the large powers enabled manufacturing to get a firm hold 
upon Massachusetts, and inasmuch as manufacturing is the greatest 
wealth-producer in the state and the products have made the state 
famous throughout the nation, the glacier has had no small share in 
shaping the destinies of the commonwealth and influencing the lives 
of the people. 

To the glacier also must be credited Massachusetts' poor show- 
ing in agriculture, for the ice mixed transported boulders, gravel 
and sand so thoroughly with the soils formed in place that there is 

11 Paper manufacture has three divisions: (i) Reduction of raw material 
to pulp; (2) sheets, single or continuous, formed from pulp; (3) finishing. 

176 



Malcolm Keir. 



17 



hardly a farm where the nature of the ground to be worked is uni- 
form. During the era of agricultural self-sufficiency the variegated 
types of soil were not a detriment, for they permitted one farm to 
produce the many things needed by the isolated households ; but in 
modern times with farming specialized by competitive money crops, 
the man whose holdings of land are not fairly uniform cannot hope 
to be successful in large-scale production. Inasmuch as American 
agriculture since the opening of the Erie Canal has been distin- 
guished by its extensive rather than its intensive character it may 
be seen how handicapped the farmers of Massachusetts have been 
by the marked inequality of the soils with which they labored. 



Value. 0) AU FarmTVocliLcts*?iv-Ca.bLta.~Pobu.la.ii.oa. 

ij' J» 7/ /»» /»< r /fe ns- -toi .«tJ^ Afo JJi- 

I I I I 




Fig. 8. The Insignificance of Agriculture in Massachusetts. 



The multiplicity of soil types on one farm aggravates another 
peculiarity of glacial drift, namely its lack of immediate fertility. 
Soils of this character will endure for an indefinite period, because 
the rock breaks up and sets free the chemicals needed for fertilizing 
elements, but compared to virgin prairie they seem lean and miserly. 
Since the farmers, like other business men, are less concerned with 
the condition that will confront their grandsons than they are with 
getting the greatest return for their own labor, glacial soils cannot 
compete with the prairies ; hence when they are brought into rivalry, 

177 



i8 Some Responses to Environment in Massachusetts. 

the soils that will last the longest are abandoned in favor of those 
which give wealth the quickest. There is no large area of Massa- 
chusetts free from glacial drift, therefore, her agriculture sank to a 
comparatively low level when forced to contest with the deep, ex- 
tensive, rich soils of western states. Only seven per cent, of the 
people dwell in rural surroundings and crops valued at $10.99 P^^ 
capita^" are insignificant sources of wealth compared to manufactures 
that are worth $442 per person. Of the five greatest manufacturing 
states, Alassachusetts devotes the smallest share of her energies 
toward farming. 

Not only have the niggardly soils been forced to compete with 
more generous ones elsewhere, but right at home they have had to 
meet rivals more potent — the factories — which, as we have shown, 
were set up in nearly every stream valley at places where the glacier 
had forced the waterway into new channels. The ice sheet, there- 
fore, made manufacturing easy, but heightened the ordinary diffi- 
culties of farming. The close propinquity of easy work in mills 
with unremitting labor on the farm spelled doom to the farm. If all 
the manufacturing plants in the state had been way off " down east " 
farm lads would have dreamed about them, but their lure would 
have been lessened by distance ; as it was, the boy heard the factory 
whistle in the nearby valley when he ploughed.^^ Since the glacier 
was responsible for placing the factory within sight of the farm, 
and at the same time made farming an arduous, profitless task, we 
may safely attribute to its visitation the relative positions of the two 
industries, with manufacturing far in the lead and agriculture trail- 
ing ignobly in the rear. 

Dairying, the one great agricultural activity common to all parts 
of the state, is the direct outcome of the two factors outlined above. 
Soil poorly adapted to extensive farming; and populous centers 
growing in the valleys at points where glacial drift caused a change 
of current, creating water power and consequently manufacturing ; 
these are the two principal forces that have placed cow culture in 
the forefront of Massachusetts agriculture. 

With few exceptions all the soils surveyed in the state have 
proved more admirably suited to grass than any other product, so 

1" Per capita means whole population, not per capita rural population. 
13 See illustration, Plate VI, page 174. 

178 



Malcolm Keir. 19 

it is only the expected result that hay is the greatest crop, for even 
precipitous fields, too steep to permit any cultivation, may be de- 
voted to grass and utiHzed as permanent pastures. Consequently the 
most familiar sights in Massachusetts are bursting hay wagons or 
rocky hillsides dotted with grazing milch cattle. In a region of such 
miserly soil as this, dairying is the logical industry, because it exerts 
the least drain upon the land. Crops which require a large amount 
of plant food would soon bankrupt the ground, but dairying raises 
the quality of the soil because so much fertilizing matter is returned 
to the meadows and pastures ; therefore milk production is the in- 
dustry most consistent with the environment of Massachusetts, pro- 
vided a market can be found. 

It is upon this latter score that the glacial water-power sites have 
supplemented glacial soils in bringing about the preeminence of 
dairying, for nowhere else in our country is there a state where so 
great a proportion of the people is separated from the land and 
creates such a demand for milk and butter. Ninety-three per cent, 
of the population lives in towns larger than twenty-five hundred, and 
seventy-five per cent, in cities of more than ten thousand population. 
Since this unparalleled market increases in size yearly, and inasmuch 
as cows may be raised wherever grass will grow, and considering 
that grass is the crop best adjusted to the soil of Massachusetts, the 
prevalence of dairying in the state is easily interpreted. 

Notwithstanding the fact that the glacial period was so unkind 
to Massachusetts agriculture in most respects, it did confer benefits, 
however, upon the farming of certain particular parts of the state, 
notably the Connecticut Valley and Cape Cod. 

The great gash cut across the state by the Connecticut River is 
the richest agricultural region in Massachusetts and the most unique, 
for the falling waters of the glacial lake formed by a natural dam 
below Hartford left terraces along the valley that mark the various 
levels at which the lake paused in its retreat. These terraces are 
composed of silt gathered from the whole Connecticut watershed 
and carried by the stream to the lake where the check offered to the 
current caused the water to drop the finest particles at the borders 
of the lake, and the coarsest nearest the channel. The resultant soil 
is the best that can be found in the state, and the easiest to work. 
The variation, however, between the terraces and the borders of the 
present river gives rise to a segregation of crops. 

179 



20 Some Responses to Environment in Massachusetts. 

Along the terraces tobacco has been the leading crop since 1802 
when the wife of a Windsor farmer made the first cigar to be pro- 
duced in the Connecticut Valley. Tobacco is most exhausting to the 
land, therefore only the rich, deep level soil of the terraces is de- 
voted to the crop. On the meadow lands bordering the river the leaf 
is too dark, heavy and low grade, so that the very suspicion that 
tobacco came from the meadows is enough to kill its sale, but 
the land so despised for tobacco is prized for corn, potatoes, onions, 
other vegetables and grass. The valley has almost half of the state's 
total acreage devoted to corn, about a third of that used for potatoes, 
and the number and quality of onions raised in the valley make it 
one of the minor centers for that product in the United States.^* 
This is the only portion of Massachusetts or all New England which 
compares favorably with the rich agricultural areas of New York, 
Pennsylvania or the prairie states. 

Next to the Connecticut Valley the chief exception to the rule 
that poor soil makes dairying supreme is found on Cape Cod and 
the adjacent portions of the mainland. The Cape is a. moraine, the 
dumping ground of the glacier, and its soil is sandy, which causes 
it to be well adapted to berries or small fruits. Hence it is the home 
of the cranberry, the principal small fruit raised in Massachusetts. 
To grow cranberries there are three physical requisites ; plenty of 
sand, a bog and water. The Cape possesses all three of these in 
abundance, so it was the first part of the United States to become 
famous for cranberries, and even at the present time produces one 
half the entire crop for the nation. 

We must frankly state, however, that the climate of Cape Cod is 
fully as influential a factor in its agriculture as the soil, for the cool, 
even temperatures give the cranberry crop a freedom from fungous 

^* New York is the only eastern state that surpasses Massachusetts in 
onion acreage. 

Acres 1909. 

Ohio '. 6,000 

New York 5,ooo 

Texas 5,ooo 

California 4,000 

Indiana 4,000 

Illinois 3,000 

Louisiana 2,000 

Massachusetts 2,000 

180 



Malcolm Keir. 21 

diseases that is not attained in any of the other cranberry districts. ^^ 
Furthermore, the chmate has given rise to a thriving market-garden 
business because the spring seasons on the Cape are fully two weeks 
ahead of the mainland, so that the farmers have the double ad- 
vantage of a climate as soft as Maryland, yet right next door to the 
greatest consuming market in New England. Cape strawberries ap- 
pear in Boston the first week in June, and being the foremost native 
berries to arrive, sell for 25 to 50 cents a quart. Ten to fourteen 
days later the avalanche of native berries strikes the market and de- 
presses the price to 7 cents a quart. Climate, therefore, is a large 
determinant of agriculture on the Cape and of course it is due to the 
almost all-surrounding ocean. The glacier, by dumping its burden 
of materials in the sea, gave the marine climate an opportunity to 
operate for the benefit of man, and the ice sheet also provided the 
sort of soil most needed for the full utilization of climate in pro- 
ducing early season crops. 

It is worthy of note that the soil of Massachusetts is the basis of 
a social movement that may have consequences of grave significance. 
Everyone is familiar with the story of farm desertion that took place 
when the prairie states were opened to settlement, and also the aban- 
donment of the land that has kept step with the growth of factories, 
until, as we have shown, Massachusetts is a state of cities and its 
people almost wholly a great group of mill operatives. If we may 
look for an increase in the amount of capital necessary to conduct 
factory enterprises on account of the ever-present tendency to trans- 
fer skill to machines, then the future of Massachusetts is dark in- 
deed, for its population will sink lower and lower as mere tenders 
of machinery, provided there is no escape from this thraldom. The 
mechanical equipment of mills has already reached such a point of 
perfection that inexperienced immigrants may operate the con- 
trolling levers. The social result is that Massachusetts is inhabited 
by persons two thirds of whom have lived in the United States less 
than two generations^*^ and almost one third are actually foreign 

15 New Jersey, Michigan, Oregon, Washington, and Long Island. 

16 Native whites of native parents 32.8 

Native whites of foreign or mixed 348 

Foreign born whites 312 

Negroes ^-^ 

Arranged from abstract U. S. Census, 1910. 

181 



2 2 Some Responses to Environment in Massachusetts. 

born. If Massachusetts is to perform the traditional function of 
the melting pot these people must have the same choice of occupa- 
tions offered by cheap land that enabled our forefathers to make a 
place for themselves in the world. Most fortunately the glacial soil 
of Massachusetts will permit the aliens within her boundaries to 
emancipate themselves from the serfdom of factory labor, and more- 
over Massachusetts is a far more advantageous place for an immi- 
grant-operative-farmer to commence his struggle for economic free- 
dom than states such as Illinois, where the soil is much richer. The 
Illinois factory worker is bound to his mill toil, while the Massachu- 
setts laborer may break the shackles if he so chooses. This state- 
ment is too startling to go unproven, but the evidence is at hand, and 
shown by the subjoined table: 





Mass. 


Illinois 


U.S. 


Size of farm: Area, number of acres 

Value per acre 

Average value land per farm 


77-9 

$36 
$2,859 
86 

7 

7 


129. 1 

S95 
$12,270 


138 

S3 2 


Per cent, operated by owners 

Per cent, operated by tenants 

Per cent, operated by managers 


56 ; 68.1 

41 i 25.9 

3 6.1 


Population per square mile 

Per cent, population rural 

Increase rural population between 1900-1910. 

Number cities 25,000 or over 

Number towns 2,500 or over 


418.8 
7.2 
2.2 
25 

154 


100.6 30.8 

38.3 53-7 
0.3 ' II 
12 
144 









Compiled from U. S. Censu=, 1910. 

The Illinois farm is sixty-six and two thirds per cent, greater in 
area than the one in Massachusetts, its average value of land per 
farm is more than four times as great, and almost half of the farms 
are operated by tenants ; here we have a statistical picture of a landed 
aristocracy. Anyone who visits Illinois will see farms worth $300 
an acre, upon which tenants are struggling for existence, while the 
county towns are filled with the landowners living on rents. How 
can an immigrant working in a Chicago factory aspire to take up 
land and make bis way upward in the world in the face of these 
hopeless conditions? Yet Illinois ranks third among the states in 
the value of products manufactured ; fourth, in value of manu- 
factured products per capita; and fifth, in the proportion of total 
population engaged in manufactures. 

182 



Malcolm Keir. 23 

It would appear as if the people of future Illinois will fall into 
two classes, one the owners of land and machines, the other the 
workers. Under the conditions cited it would do a mill employee 
little good to seek the country, for he would but exchange masters. 
Circumstances are adjusted in Illinois to make real the nightmare of 
the rich growing richer and the poor growing poorer. 

On the other hand, the Massachusetts farm is small, the land is 
cheap and tenantry is well-nigh unknown ; moreover, the state offers 
unexampled opportunities in the matter of markets, as a glance at 
the figures of population and the numbers of cities will show. It is 
encouraging to see in every center of manufacturing in Massachu- 
setts a slow seepage of factory workers back to the land. Immi- 
grants working part tim.e in the shops and part time on their farms 
pay for the farm — which frequently costs them as little as twenty- 
five dollars an acre — until the debt is removed, and then retire from 
the mill permanently and take their places as owners and workers 
of the ground. The soil despised by the previous generations of 
Americans may be the salvation of the next, and be a mighty influ- 
ence in the amalgamation of conflicting races. The very poverty as 
compared with prairie soils has kept the land within the reach of the 
pocketbooks of poor men, and may be the means of regeneration of 
both the immigrants who live upon it, and the state within which it 
lies. The soil is by no means sterile or worked out, and when used 
for fruit, berries and vegetables yields a fair Hving, because the great 
market will absorb all that is produced. In the end, therefore, the 
curse put upon the agriculture of the state by the glacier may be 
lifted. The contrast, however, between the opportunity offered a 
poor man in lUinois and one in Massachusetts, now curiously re- 
flecting credit to the state with the less natural endowments, is the 
result of conditions set up by man. As long as society permits land- 
lordism and allows those that have to hold, in defiance of public 
good, then a situation like the one sketched above is possible, but if 
America is to follow English precedent it seems probable that before 
the mass of workmen are forced to accept land like much of that in 
Massachusetts, a change will take place in our laws and landlordism 
be taxed out of existence. 

We have pointed out that the glacier was responsible for the 
early development of manufacturing in Massachusetts, because the 

183 



24 Some Responses to Environment in Massachusetts. 



changes instituted by the ice sheet bequeathed to the state so many 
valuable power sites, and we have also shown that the poverty- 
stricken condition of agriculture is due to the same set of circum- 
stances added to the disturbance of the soil. Moreover, the excep- 
tional parts of the state where agriculture is advantageously equipped 
by nature owe their prominence in farming to the alterations wrought 
by the glacier. Manufacturing and agriculture are two industries 
w^iose present destinies were foreshadowed in the past geological 
era, and to them we may add the quarry industry of the state, for it 
uses a stone laid bare by the action of ice upon the surface of the 
Sfround. 



Percentage oj lotafR[)ulai ion. EvLda^ei iYiMa.nii-Ja.diLTe§. 



Tfercent • 



/<r 



aa 



OKio 

ILL 



1 1 1 1 




1 1 1 






1 1 1 




^' 





ATeifT 



Fig. 9. Percentage of Total Population Engaged in Manufactures. 
Until the time of the glacier, granite lay buried deep beneath the 
surface of the earth, but the crushing burden of ice so levelled many 
of the hills that the interior granite lay exposed to the air when 
the glacier had passed away. Man has taken advantage of this 
circumstance to quarry the stone for uses ranging all the way from 
paving stones worth 25 cents a cubic foot to beautiful monuments 
which cost $70 a cubic foot. Granite has so much utility for struc- 
tural and ornamental purposes that it is the most valuable stone 
resource Massachusetts possesses, comprising 63 per cent, in value 
of all the stones quarried. This stone would not be available if the 

184 



Malcolm Keir. 25 

glacier had not removed the overburden under which the granite was 
hidden. 

All told, the glacier changed the land in ways that were bene- 
ficial to Massachusetts, for its water power was a boon to manu- 
facturers, the silt in its lakes and the coarser materials at the terminal 
moraine have been an advantage to farmers, and rock resources have 
been placed at the disposal of modern quarrymen. On the other 
hand, the glacier has seriously limited agriculture, because it scat- 
tered debris over so much of the state, yet in the course of time even 
this apparent detriment may prove a boon because it has kept the 
land cheap and brings it within the means of poor people, who can 
use it to attain their economic independence. 

The main features of life in Massachuetts have been controlled 
by two environmental facors, the first of which — the general north- 
south trend of the hills and valleys — was responsible for the early 
grouping of population along the seaboard and the Connecticut 
valley, and operates the same way today ; the direction of land forms 
also caused the main lines of travel to run north and south instead 
of east and west, a route more desirable for political reasons. Manu- 
facturing, agriculture and even summer visitors have been segre- 
gated by the tendency of the hills and valleys to open northward and 
southward. Along with this feature of the environment and fully 
as influential, are the changes brought about by the visitation of the 
glacier. The creation of water power, the alteration of the soil and 
the baring of rocks have done much to direct industry ; for manu- 
facturing, agriculture and quarrying in their present form, and in 
their positions of relative importance may be traced to these causes. 
Since the history, politics, the prestige and the present problems of 
the state have all turned about one or the other of these two en- 
vironmental factors or the results that have flowed from them, we 
may safely grant them a place of paramount importance. 

Note : For the plates used throughout this article the author is 
indebted to the Boston and Maine Railroad. 



185 



MB 2.4.2 










-% 











^„ ** 












^0 



^^--^^ 











i'^ 




v 



-^0^ 
.^^ 











•^0^ 



c ° " " -. *•<*' 













•0.' •^ 



'^-o^ 



4 o^ 




'b V^ 














C, VP 







-^0^ 





^0^ 



%^^^ ;^fe\ \/^ ;^^^„ %^^^ „. 









.^i:^'> o^ 
















>^ 






^ ^ ^ 
\ %^\^ 













<=b 



<* .. -^ '"' ^5^° K- "" ^ 






> -.''^^^..- 'V V V 






'^ U <i^ /j 






o V 


















